Showing posts with label chelseathecivic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chelseathecivic. Show all posts

Saturday, September 28, 2019

Analysis of 2019 NASA Champs Honda Challenge H4 Race with RaceHero

Introduction
Racing is a data-driven sport.  Regardless of the money or car you have, it's possible to make educated decisions on setup changes or tweaks to driving style by using hard work and commitment.  However, without understanding the craft of data analysis, hard work and commitment can often lead to dead ends.

Burning the Midnight Oil with Crew Members Kelley and Andrew at 2019 NASA Championships

In this article, EJ2 Track Rat will show readers how "free" lap analyses from RaceHero can be used to go faster in a race.

RaceHero Logo

How it Works

RaceHero is a free service that shows the provisional lap times, positions, and announcements for races and time trial events with many organizations such as the National Auto Sport Association (NASA) or the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA).

Racers or high performance drivers put a transponder on their car and their racing info is transmitted to this website for the sake of reviewing provisional results.  While the data on RaceHero is not official data used for prizes or points, it is extremely useful since racers can see their own data and and their competitors' data.

Overall Position on Y-Axis, Lap Times on X-Axis

Fast Lap Times

Throughout the weekend, I was keeping an eye on my lap times relative to my competitors'.  I was up against some stiff competition from the West Coast including National Champion, Robert Krider and his teammate, Keith Kramer of Double Nickel Nine, as well as my good friend Carlos Valenzuela and Steve Peterson of Team Beans and Dog Racing.

These Guys Mean Business!

During practice on the first day, with the help of my Crew Chief, Andrew, I made changes to the car after every session.  I did not run my transponder for the first two sessions of five, but I did run it for the third, fourth and fifth sessions.  During the third session, I was about 1.5 seconds off of the leader, Robert Krider with a best lap time of 1:46.882 vs. his 1:45.338.

Results from Session 3 Practice

By the end of the day, Krider had improved by ~0.3 seconds relative to my times.  This suggests my competitor was able to make a significant change to the car's performance or to his driving style which would make my job harder for the weekend.  Regardless, this analysis prepares one to look for more time in more places-- i.e. work harder.


For the first qualifying session, Team Beans and Dog switched drivers from Steve to Carlos and laid down a flyer.  Of note, additionally, was the overall drop in lap times for all competitors, suggesting that the track was "getting faster," providing more grip for drivers.  This is due to cloud cover, ambient temperature, and humidity per experience.


As the day went on, track conditions became further quick as suggested by another overall drop in lap times.  While I wasn't gaining significant ground on the leader for qualifying, I was maintaining a steady deficit utilizing car changes to keep up with a stacked racing team.  In Qualifying #2, again, I was in 4th, but the results were slightly different, running my fastest lap thus far.


Race Analysis

There were two races during the Championship Weekend-- one was a qualifying race and one was the main event for the podium.  

Standing in 3rd on the Podium Against Reigning National Champ team Double Nickel Nine

During a race, the fastest lap time matters, but what matters more?  The sum of the following matters more:

1.) Traffic management

Managing faster or slower, out-of-class cars passing without significant loss in speed/position are facets of good traffic management.

2.) A good start

Avoiding jumping the start which would result in disqualification, having impeccable reaction time when the flag drops, and deciding when to pass or bump help for a good start.

3.) Car/driver consistency

If the driver cannot maintain their level of performance throughout a race due to a lack of cardio or mental conditioning, they will fall off in speed.  If the car is not set up to make the tires "happy," the car will fall off in speed.  A combination of the two is key.

4.) Flag management

You can be leading a 45-minute race for the entire time.  But if you pass just once under a yellow, you will be disqualified.

5.) Defense

How to stop a faster in-class car from getting around you.

6.) Offense

How to pass an in-class car from behind and make it stick.

RaceHero can be used to measure all of these things-- whether one at a time, or collectively.  For example, a good start would be suggested in part by a good lap time for the first lap relative to competitors or a large gain in position.  Car/driver consistency can be gauged by a drop or lack thereof in lap times over the course of the race.  A defending driver may maintain position in front of an in-class car with a faster best lap time.

Photo of #ChelseaTheCivic Leaving the Keyhole at Mid-O (Photo by Herb Lopez of @DriveNASA

For race analysis, I typically take all of the RaceHero data I can get for my competitors and put it into an Excel Sheet like a true engineer would.  Below you will see that I copied all lap times from RaceHero, converted them to total seconds to make it easier for Excel to analyze, then I measured standard deviation of hot, green laps (not first or last lap...no standing yellow laps) and put it in a table:

Getting my Data Nerd on

For the first lap, it's clear that I had a very good start.  I decided to bump Kramer whose start was not as good to keep Steve on my inside while Ken had the best start of all of us, getting the jump on Keith, Steve, and myself to second place.  

However, leading into China Beach, Ken was passed back by both Keith and I with Steve still in tow of Ken.  The rest of the first lap was a game of traffic management.  All of these factors lead me to the second-fastest first lap time.  However, with nearly a 20-HP deficit to my competitor Krider, a better time would have been difficult to achieve:

Starting Lap Times

Next, we'll look at the beginning laps of the race.  In the beginning laps of the race, it's important to play offense, attempting passes on your competitors while the tires are still fresh.  It's also important to get by slower out-of-class traffic as quickly as possible.  During this portion of the race, heart rate and adrenal release should be highest.

Photo by Herb Lopez of @DriveNASA

Below you'll see a graph of overall lap time in seconds vs lap # for Steve, P4 and myself, P3.  For the first half of the race I laid down a killer start and close to the fastest lap I could for my second lap.  After that, variation in lap time was caused by out-of-class traffic.  However my good start allowed me to maintain a comfortable lead:

Analysis of Race Start

In the middle of the race, I try to conserve my tires as best as possible so I can lay down flyers at the end of the race.  This is also clearly noticeable in the next graph I'll show below.  What's important to remember is while you're saving your tires, your competitor in the spot behind you may be catching up.  This was exactly the case as Steve, in his lightweight CRX began to close the gap:

Mid-Race Analysis

By the end of the race, one may note that Steve and I were running very close times.  Keen eyes will also observe that Steve's fastest overall lap time was somewhere near 1 second faster than my fastest overall lap time, suggesting this driver/car combo had more speed than I.  This makes sense because by the end of the race I was driving as defensively as I could within racing rules.  It's important to avoid blocking or other foul play when employing proper defense, but it's also important to maintain position, obviously.

End-of-Race Analysis

Driver and car consistency among the pack will lastly be analyzed.  To do this, we look at standard deviation and average lap time per competitor.  Any laps with yellow flags, red flags, restarts, and aborted starts are thrown out.  Additionally, we do not consider starting and finishing lap from RaceHero when calculating these statistics.

Since this is averaged over the entire race, this heavily favors analysis of driver consistency over car consistency.  Car consistency is better analyzed in segments as shown above.  However, car consistency is a variable feeding into this analysis.

Overall Race and Consistency Analysis

As shown above, Steve and I had the best consistency over the course of the race (+/- 0.80 and +/- 0.69, respectively).  We had an awesome, clean battle that ended up with me in P3 and Steve in P4.  The race video is here:


Champ Race Highlights

Thanks for the read, all.  Looking forward to my next blog post.

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

#TrashTeg, The Chronicles; Part 3-- DIY Racecar Seat Back Brace

When we last left off regarding #TrashTeg, we discussed safety upgrades before an HPDE event.  In this blog post, we're going to narrow the scope a bit and talk about some specifics-- specifically regarding the seats.


Recall that the seats we used in this budget, to-be, Honda Challenge H4 race car, were found on Craigslist for an extremely cheap price due to their condition and age.  We paid ~$150 picked up ~30 minutes from home.


While the condition of the seats won't win any car shows, we don't care because we're racing the car.  However because the seats are old, their FIA certification has expired.

When doing HPDE or track days with the National Auto Sport Association (NASA) or other clubs, this may be okay as long as the car passes other safety rules.  However, wheel-to-wheel racing is a different story.  If the FIA certification is expired, the seat must be reinforced to ensure the seat back doesn't snap on impact.  To solve this problem, enter the back brace.


A seat back brace is intended to prevent excess movement of the seat forward or backward in a crash.  This ensures that the driver stays in the same spot, the harnesses do their job, and the driver is unharmed due to whiplash or other injury caused by sudden, harsh movement.  To read more about seat back braces and why they're useful, see this article by IO Port Racing.


Since our Integra was being converted from an HPDE car with a roll bar to a race car, one thing (among many) we needed to add was this seat back brace.  

The IO Port back brace is what we used, not because we're sponsored by them (I wish), but just because it's what we happened to order from them.  The kit comes with everything you'll need.  The picture below shows the contents of the kit and what purpose the components serve:


To begin installing our new brace, we first stripped the pristine fabric off of our God-knows-how-old years-old seats.


Lifting back the foam, it was easy to see where we could drill into for our new brace.


Next we began bolting things together.  In the labeled picture of the seat back brace above, you'll notice that the tube that transfers load from the seat to the cage in the event of a crash is secured to the cage with a two-piece, machined block of metal.  The top half of this block bolts to the cage and the bottom half bolts to the tube that transfers load.

We loosely bolted this onto the cage first.



Next, we grabbed our load transfer tube shown below:


And we inserted it into the bottom part of the machined block which we had loosely attached to the cage.  After doing this, we tried our best to center the bracket on the middle of the seat.

You'll notice that seat-back bracket was flat but the seat was curved.


To remedy this we needed to intervene, bending the soft aluminum with a vise and a hammer.  While in the vise, we also drilled the holes for the seat-to-bracket mounting hardware.  

Note that in the NASA Club Codes and Regulations (CCR), the mounting hardware facing the back of the car's driver must be flush with the seat, not protruding.  IO Port includes allen bolts which preclude any potential conflict with this rule and also provide for additional safety.



With the bracket bent to the profile of the seat, we centered the bracket with a whiteout marker and marked where the seat needed to be drilled.



Then, we secured the bracket to the seat using the provided hardware from IO Port.  On the side of the seat facing the racer's back, we used allen bolts with rounded heads as previously mentioned.  On the side opposite the racer's back, IO Port provided us locking nuts to use.


With the seat back brace secured to the seat and all other components loose, we finally began securing all other components which would bring us near completion.

The diagram below shows the order of final installation.  First, tighten the back brace-to-load transfer tube bolts.  Second, tighten the allen bolts securing the main block to the cage.  Third, drill a hole in the load transfer tube and insert your cotter pin:


With the back brace fully installed, we finally put the fabric back on our seat and concluded our install.  The fabric is easy to install back onto the old Corbeaus.  It has an elastic band that allows the fabric to stretch around the contours of the seat and tighten once past the edges.


Detailed photos of the installation are shown below:



On May 3rd, my friend Alex is going to New Jersey Motorsports Park with NASA Northeast to participate in Competition School for his provisional license and hopefully begin racing with the Honda Challenge H4 crew.

Image may contain: car

If you wish to attend one of our events, reach out to me in the comments section and I can get back to you ASAP!

Thanks for reading! --Track Rat